Magnet schools, alternative schools, charter schools. Intra-district choice, inter-district choice, open enrollment. Back-to-basics schools, technology academies, schools designed for young African-American males.
In the past two decades, support has built for increasing the variety of options within public education, and for giving parents more power to decide which option suits their child best. Advocates say that greater variety among schools will increase the likelihood that parents will find a school that matches their educational values and their child's learning needs. By having a choice, moreover, parents are more likely to be involved in and committed to the school they've chosen than they would be if it had been assigned by school authorities. Further, the demand for schools of different types and quality could spur school officials to create more schools that "consumers" favor, or close or revamp programs with little support, some advocates say.
But even as the number of options grows, questions are increasingly being raised about the ultimate impact of the trends toward greater school variety and parental choice. Will choice result in more responsive, higher-quality schools and happier parents? Or will the proliferation of options further sort students and families by race, social class, and special interest, eroding our traditional democratic notions of a common school experience for all?
"If we are to take seriously the role of the public school in actualizing democratic mandates, the development of schools and school experiences cannot be left to the vagaries of consumer and family demand," Peter Hlebowitsh, associate professor of education at the University of Iowa, warns in a recent issue of the NASSP Bulletin. "The common school ideal, and its accompanying common causes, are made optional in a climate of choice and variety, where anything goes as long as there is client interest in it" (Hlebowitsh 1995).
Charter Schools Emerge
Public schools have always offered some variety, of course, but the push for options and choice has greatly intensified recently. In 1991, for example, Minnesota became the first state to pass a law allowing charter schools. Now, 25 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws, and 226 charter schools serve 28,000 students around the nation, according to a new report (American Federation of Teachers 1996).
The presumed benefits of charters are similar to those claimed for other choice programs. In well-conceived and well-run choice plans, "You create a school that stands for something substantively or pedagogically or both, and then you allow people to...select themselves to be there," says Mary Anne Raywid, professor emerita at Hofstra University and a longtime choice advocate. This allows both parents and teachers to commit to a common mission or focus of a school, rather than being assigned for strictly bureaucratic reasons. Raywid also believes that choice offers a ticket out for students stuck in low-performing schools. "It gives students a chance to attend a school of quality that they otherwise might not be able to attend, and it gets them out of poor schools." Because well-to-do families have always had the choice of moving where the best schools are, choice plans can give less advantaged families similar options.
Creating different school programs and offering parents choices among them makes sense because there is no "one best school" for every child, supporters say. Choice can support educational innovation, they say, by encouraging practitioners to develop alternatives to the typical school program.
Increased Sorting?
Other experts warn that choice creates new problems or intensifies old ones. The most common concern is that, far from leveling the playing field, choice can exacerbate inequities. When schools must compete for students, "the kids who are the most desirable ... are going to have an edge, and they're going to win those competitions," says Amy Stuart Wells, associate professor of educational policy at the University of California at Los Angeles. Adds Willis Hawley, education dean at the University of Maryland, "The people who will benefit are those who are the most aggressive, the most resourceful, and the most committed." The end result, some experts believe, is that the "best" students and the most involved parents will flee neighborhood schools for magnet programs or other specialized schools. Neighborhood schools will have difficulty sustaining such a loss.
In an article appearing in Education Week, Hawley (1996) argued that, "For many parents, the social, racial, and ethnic characteristics of a school's students are more important than a school's curriculums or its academic effectiveness in their selection of a school." School choice, Hawley wrote, "will reduce the opportunities that students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds have to learn from and about one another."
Other experts disagree, saying that the best choice plans are designed to mitigate such harmful effects. Raywid says that all schools in a district can be set up as distinctive schools of choice, so that certain schools aren't seen as second class. So-called "controlled choice" plans factor race and ethnicity into school assignments to ensure that parents' choices don't increase racial isolation. Transportation is provided to ensure students' access to a range of schools. And successful choice plans also include measures to inform parents of their options, such as school tours, parent liaisons, and choice fairs where schools publicize their offerings, Raywid says.
Private or Public Good?
Others, however, are concerned that the trends toward more options and greater choice represent a shift with dangerous philosophical overtones. More and more, they say, education is seen as a private good, with parents positioned as consumers of whatever public education best suits their needs. Losing credence is the argument that public education is provided for the common good, and that students should share some common experiences in common settings. Can this be achieved when schools hew largely to the demands of the market?
"What happens to democratic process and collective debate, including the voices of nonparents, when parents control the system as autonomous consumers?" writes David Tyack (1992), professor of education and history at Stanford University. "What happens to common purposes when the goal is individual satisfaction, to children with special needs when many schools are not required to deal with them, and to balanced academic standards when schooling is deregulated?"
Even supporters of choice have some nagging doubts. "I have some concerns that if schools become defined as belonging just to their immediate constituents, then it raises the question of why the rest of us should support them," says Raywid.
The prospect of voucher plans—which some see as the ultimate form of parental choice, but which many advocates of school choice staunchly oppose—tinges the discussion about options and choice. Are vouchers, which parents could use to send their children to a private school, the logical next step for school choice, or will vouchers continue to be limited to a handful of experimental programs involving low-income families? Most experts predict the latter. "The history of voucher propositions is that it will be very hard to find a coalition of people who support public funding going to private schools," says Tyack.
Ironically, the threat of vouchers may result in more support for choice, but choice limited to the public school system. "Public choice is probably getting a better hearing today, in part because people are very frightened by vouchers," says Raywid. It seems clear that, far from running out of steam, the trend toward more options and parental choice is as strong as it has ever been.
